Mlp Twilight Time

Oh boy, it’s Twilight time. I just... don’t have anything to say on it. It’s just so bready. It’s more like feeding on crums than a piece of bread.

The threads of a story are there for this episode, it’s trying to be a simple tale of the CMC gaining popularity in an unjust manner type story... kinda.  A big difficulty I have with the angle the episode takes is that it’s more the other kids fault than the CMC. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon orchestrate a lot of the problems in this episode, they seem to propagate and support the notion that Twilight is an important person to meet via Twilight Time, because she’s a princess. The vast hordes of ponies was their doing more than the CMC’s, the hordes lack of judgement and herd mentality is more to blame than the CMC who just go along with the flow more than propagate it.

The episode feels weird in a way because the CMC are the focus of the story, their actions are not driving force in their own story. The episode wants to make their actions be at fault, but also makes them just mostly watch the insanity unfold rather than directly propagate it. It’s more the bullies story than the CMC’s, because they have agency over their actions whilst the CMC don’t. From my perspective, things just seem to happen, or too much is done off camera. Creating a great following was done by the bullies off camera. Making the plans for the restaurant, and then convincing all the others come along was done off camera. The only things that we see on screen, is the use of the butlers gymnastics to wow the crowd and the abuse of favours done by the CMC. Everything else is just the CMC humming and harring over their decisions and generally just reacting to the situations in front of them.

It’s why I feel that this episode has a very stilted feel. The ‘cause’ of the ‘effect’ is very disconnected for a lot of this episode. The propagators of this episode are more the background duo than the main trio. The final ‘conclusion’ is made by the relatively ignorant Twilight and CMC, who jumped to conclusions about themselves without considering the things that went on off camera.

It makes our main characters (Twi & (mostly just the) CMC) come across as narrow minded cretins. They can’t seem to grasp there’s an outside world of things going on in this story and their lack of thought or communication about what’s going on is more the problem than them propagating their own popularity. On the part of DT & SS I am not sure what their goals where, did they do this all to get under the CMC’s skin, or to get close to Twilight? Their motivations and course of action (when they are arguably the main characters of this story) isn’t shown in enough detail. Not only that all that happens on their part is they enact a plan and then are shunted out the door... which isn’t much of a story either, at least in how it was presented. Lastly the other kids really need to be given more of a voice than just Pip at the end, they are shown as simple minded cretins who bolt towards DT because her butler did some amazing stuff.... wat.

Other than the main messy plot, the episode has several other things that bugged me. The kid exposition of this episode is pretty bad. For some examples: “She's using somepony else to build herself up, and without even putting any effort to learn her own skills like we do!” (SL. Telling her friends the blindingly obvious, when it’s clear that AB just felt the same thing). “Are you kiddin'? I don't want them laughing at us while I'm mixin' potions and accidentally sendin' plants into chokin' fits!” (AB. Her friends and the audience know full well their failings, she doesn’t need to exposit the details to them.) “Because then I could get all my classmates to do me favors and stuff because I'm friends with a famous princess!” (Pip. By the age of 4, kids can lie and know how to avoid getting into trouble, Pip just told her and us the obvious motivation cool faced because seemingly, Twi can’t put two and two together and the writer wants to make it clear what the crowds intentions are). Kid exposition isn’t anything new to S3 or S4 to be fair. I still feel patronized and disenchanted from it anyway. Characters telling others unrealistically what should be obvious to the others is redundant and stupid.

So in conclusion, Twilight time is a mess of a story. It makes our main characters pushovers and ignorant, to the greater, rather unexplained and also stupid goings on of the outside world. This episode will be swiftly forgotten no doubt because it doesn’t have anything that really gives it any identity, beyond it being the random scribblings of gaining popularity that one could try to read meaning into.